The Heat We Have Always Known
It is too hot.
The ground is dry.
The grass disappears.
The water becomes more precious.
And somewhere between one heatwave and another, someone usually says:
“This has never happened before.”
Maybe it has.
The Earth has never been a perfectly stable place.
Its climate has changed countless times throughout its history. There have been ice ages, warmer periods, droughts and enormous changes in vegetation and landscapes.
The planet we live on today is only one moment in a much longer story.
But there is another part of the story that is harder to ignore.
We are now living inside the climate we are changing.
The Earth was never still
Sometimes we speak about climate change as if the Earth once had a perfect temperature and humanity suddenly came along and disturbed it.
Nature doesn’t work that way.
The climate has always moved.
Continents moved.
Oceans changed.
Ice expanded and disappeared.
Forests grew where there are deserts today.
And deserts once existed where completely different landscapes can now be found.
Change is not an exception.
Change is part of the planet.
But this does not mean that everything happening today is simply another natural cycle.
Scientific evidence shows that human activities, especially greenhouse gas emissions, are the dominant cause of the global warming observed over recent decades. Natural variability still affects temperatures from year to year and can influence particular periods, but it cannot explain the long-term warming trend on its own. (IPCC)
So perhaps the real question is not whether the climate changes naturally.
It clearly does.
The more interesting question is what we are adding to that change.
A hotter world is not just about temperature
Look at the countryside after a long period without rain.
The soil becomes hard.
The grass disappears.
Some plants survive.
Others don’t.
A stream becomes smaller.
A dry hillside becomes easier to burn.
None of these things, by itself, proves that the entire climate system has changed because of one particular cause.
But put enough of them together and the landscape begins to tell a story.
Europe is already experiencing significant heat, drought and wildfire impacts. The latest European State of the Climate report recorded above-average annual temperatures across at least 95% of Europe in 2025, while river flows were below average across much of the continent and wildfires affected a record area. (World Meteorological Organization)
The Mediterranean is particularly familiar with this problem.
We know dry summers.
We know strong winds.
We know fires.
We know years when rain barely arrives.
None of this is new.
What may be changing is the combination.
More heat.
Less water.
Drier vegetation.
Human pressure on the land.
More buildings.
More roads.
More intensive agriculture.
More water consumption.
The individual pieces may have existed for a very long time.
But putting them together changes the consequences.
Nature doesn’t need our permission
There is something humbling about watching a landscape during a drought.
A tree doesn’t discuss climate policy.
Grass doesn’t read scientific reports.
A river doesn’t care about political arguments.
They simply respond to conditions.
If there is water, life grows.
If there isn’t, life adapts or disappears.
Nature has never promised us that the world would remain comfortable.
Perhaps that is one of the things we have forgotten.
We often speak about “saving the planet.”
But the planet has survived conditions far more extreme than anything humanity has experienced.
It will probably survive us too.
The more fragile question is whether our way of living can survive the changes we are helping to create.
We may not control the cycle
Imagine that the Earth is going through another long natural change.
Perhaps temperatures would have changed anyway.
Perhaps rainfall patterns would have shifted anyway.
That does not make everything we do irrelevant.
If someone is walking downhill and starts running, the fact that gravity was already pulling them in that direction doesn’t mean their running made no difference.
Maybe this is how we should think about our relationship with climate.
The natural system is already moving.
But human activity can push.
It can accelerate.
It can amplify.
And sometimes it can make adaptation much harder.
The distinction matters because two extreme ideas can both lead us nowhere.
“Everything is caused by humans” ignores the enormous natural history of the planet.
“Everything is natural” ignores what the evidence tells us about the human contribution to current warming.
Reality is usually less comfortable than a slogan.
The desert doesn’t need to arrive all at once
Desertification is rarely a dramatic moment when a green landscape suddenly becomes a desert.
It can be a slow process.
A little less vegetation.
A little more erosion.
A little less water.
A little more pressure on the soil.
A little more heat.
Year after year.
The landscape changes almost without asking permission.
And perhaps that is what makes it difficult to notice.
We expect change to announce itself.
Nature rarely does.
A tree doesn’t suddenly become old.
A field doesn’t suddenly become exhausted.
A climate doesn’t suddenly become different.
Things accumulate.
Until one day we look around and realize that the landscape we remember is no longer quite the same.
Perhaps the question is different
I don’t think the useful question is:
“Is climate change natural or caused by humans?”
It is too simple.
The Earth changes naturally.
Human beings are also changing the climate.
Both statements can exist at the same time.
The more uncomfortable question is this:
If the Earth was going to change anyway, how much are we accelerating the process?
And even more importantly:
How much are we making the consequences worse through the way we use land, water and energy?
We cannot negotiate with the temperature.
We cannot tell the rain when to fall.
We cannot stop the Earth from changing.
But perhaps we can decide how much pressure we place on a landscape that is already under pressure.
A natura non si cancia.
Nature changes.
Perhaps the mistake is believing that because we cannot control it, nothing we do matters.
The Earth will continue changing long after us.
The real question is what kind of Earth we choose to leave behind while it does.
For more reflections on nature, society, freedom and the world around us, visit www.signorcarretto.com.
If the Earth has always changed, perhaps the question is not whether we can stop it, but how much faster we are making it change.
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